Case Study: Vinculum Communications Delivers for NHA

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November 19, 2008 @ 06:00

Neighborhood House Association (NHA) is the largest multipurpose nonprofit organization in San Diego County, serving approximately 35,000 children, families and seniors each year. With an annual operating budget of more than $75 million and about 725 employees, the agency has nine key program areas offered at multiple facilities throughout the county designed to meet the cultural, social, health, mental health and emergency daily living needs of underserved and un-served residents including the working poor. Program service areas are focused on: Health, Youth, Teenage Pregnancy Prevention, Childhood Development, and Seniors, Mental Health, Nutrition, HIV/AIDS Services, Housing and Emergency Assistance Services.

During its 100 hundred years of operation, the agency has distinguished itself as a cutting-edge comprehensive human service provider.

Problems:

Decentralized Communications. NHA’s IT team supports more than 100 office locations and about 725 employees. The majority of the locations own and maintain different legacy telecommunications systems. This presents a logistical challenge for NHA’s limited staff, requiring them to manage various service contracts, as well as any associated infrastructure changes, billing disputes, outages and end-user helpdesk support. Dealing with multiple bills for phone services, data services, truck roll support and maintenance contracts is very time-consuming and usually involves personnel from different departments to review.

Capital Expenditure. NHA is a nonprofit organization dependent on government funding and charitable giving, which places significant restrictions on how it use funds. Funding for upkeep and maintenance of their telecommunications systems is very limited. Therefore, product upgrades and technology advancements are often not an option when using proceeds.

Solution:

Vinculum Communications’ offering, VinTalk’s Hosted IP PBX services, provides ease of use, cost-efficiency and the assurance that organizations won’t suffer from phone system obsolescence — what the company calls “future-proof” architecture. As the technology advances, which it’s doing at great speed, a client’s phone capabilities grow with it, without requiring expensive new hardware and software upgrades.

VinTalk allowed NHA to put in next-generation communications solutions with little up-front costs for equipment and installation. Implementing the hosted VoIP solution also allowed the organization’s IT director to easily migrate off of the various platforms with very little effort.

VinTalk also afforded NHA and its other clients single-source billing for all its locations as well as enhanced features such as Conference Bridge, Auto-Attendant, Find-Me-Follow-Me, Voice Mail and VinFax to improve communications to the community it serves and increase efficiency in supporting operations.

“Our existing telecommunications system was outdated and insufficient to meet the innovative approach to business development and service delivery NHA desired to implement,” says Rudolph Johnson, NHA president and CEO. “Through this agreement, not only will our communities benefit, but we will be able to bring all of our locations up-to-date with telecommunications equipment, and take advantage of leading technology that will assist us as we move forward.”

Results:

“For every dollar saved on operations such as telecommunications, one more dollar can be spent on helping families and children in the community,” said Frank Zalich, vice president of IT for Neighborhood House Association. “VinTalk improved our communications while reducing our costs.”

In addition, Vinculum Communications has committed itself to contributing a percentage of its revenue to NHA, allowing NHA to put dollars towards areas of their programs that are currently under-funded.

“Vinculum and NHA have worked closely to customize an exclusive solution that leverages technology as an operational tool for providing better services to our community’s children, friends and families. We continue to envision more and more opportunities for our company to give back,” says Joseph DePetro, president of Vinculum Communications Inc. “The NHA agreement is an example of how VoIP can add value to nonprofit organizations that struggle to balance limited resources and ever-increasing program demands.”

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